The best temperature for your refrigerator
We use our big metal friend—the refrigerator—to store pretty much everything, but is it set to the right temperature? To make sure your cheese, butter, and eggs don’t spoil too quickly in the refrigerator, this is the temperature you should set it to:
The best temperature for your refrigerator is 4°C. But one in four refrigerators is set to 7°C or even warmer, according to research by the Voedingscentrum.
Too warm
A temperature of 5 or 6°C is cold enough for butter and opened jars of sauce, but other dairy products, cold cuts, and vegetables don’t handle these temperatures well. The warmer it is in your refrigerator, the faster the number of illness-causing bacteria (listeria) increases. And of course, we don’t want that.
Your products last twice as long when your refrigerator is colder, so that’s a good reason to set the temperature in your refrigerator to 4°C.
Refrigerator settings
But which setting is that? Because no, the dial in your refrigerator doesn’t indicate the temperature. To make things even more complicated: the setting you need differs from one refrigerator to another. But one thing is always true: the higher the setting (e.g. 5), the colder the refrigerator. Do you want to know exactly? Then check the temperature with a refrigerator thermometer or look up the manual for your refrigerator.
